Instead of this he resisted every suggestion of such a
course, and so enabled Pitt to display to the world his wonderful skill
and adroitness in holding his enemies at bay.
course, and so enabled Pitt to display to the world his wonderful skill
and adroitness in holding his enemies at bay.
Cambridge History of India - v5 - British India
The resolution, after acknowledging Hastings's
many very great and meritorious, services, declared
1 Mill, The History of British India, rv, 532.
2 Parliamentary History, XXI, 985.
8 Idem, p. 75
Gleię, op. cit. 2, 485.
4
13
## p. 194 (#222) ############################################
194
THE COMPANY AND THE STATE, 1772-86
that in no one act of his government hath he been actuated by a corrupt motive,
nor is he suspected of peculation; but it is resolved by this court that Warren
Hastings Esq. hath formed wrong opinions upon points of great political im-
portance, and that he hath acted upon those opinions so as to bring great
distress upon this Company. 1
But the letter of recall was never sent, for the General Court by a
large majority rescinded the resolution of the directors. The govern-
ment upon this refused to pass for transmission to India the dispatch
drawn up by the directors informing Hastings of this series of occur-
rences, though of course everyone was aware that unofficially he
would be cognisant of the whole of them. This strange imbroglio
showed three
things : first that the hold of Hastings on the allegiance
of the proprietors, whom indeed he was wont to call his constituents,
was very strong; secondly, that the Company still possessed a large
measure of practical independence; and thirdly, that the clause in
the act of 1781 making it necessary to submit outward dispatches to
the secretary of state was liable to result in a rather ludicrous
deadlock.
Things could obviously not be left in this inconclusive and un-
satisfactory state. The Regulating Act had clearly broken down. It
had neither given the state a definite control over the Company, nor
the directors a definite control over their servants, nor the governor-
general a definite control over his council, nor the Calcutta Presidency
a definite control over Madras and Bombay. The whole question was
reopened in 1783, for the Company in March was again obliged to
petition for financial relief, and the country as a whole was inclined
to agree with Burke that “the relief and reformation of the Company
must go together. The Company had flown in the face of Parliament”. 2
Three successive proposals were put forward, those namely of
Dundas, Fox and Pitt. Dundas introduced his bill in April, 1783.
Its main provisions were : That the crown should have power to
recall the principal servants of the Company (the power was thus no
longer to be consequent on representations from the directors); that
the control of Bengal over the other presidencies should be increased;
that the governor-general should have the power of acting on his
own responsibility in opposition to the opinions of his council, and
also be empowered, if necessary, to hold the office of commander-
in-chief; that the displaced zamindars in Bengal, i. e. those displaced
by the results of the quinquennial settlement, should be restored.
The bill was obviously aiming everywhere at centralisation. It
strengthened the power of the crown over the governor-general and
the control of the governor-general both over his own council and
the subordinate governments. It is from this aspect that Malcolm
called it a
Bill for appointing a person who, under the high title of Governor-Generai
i Gleig, op. cit. II, 493.
2 Parliamentary History, XXIII, 647.
## p. 195 (#223) ############################################
FOX'S BILLS
196
and Captain-General, should exercise in his own person (under certain checks)
complete authority and control over British India. 1
In his introductory speech Dundas already pointed to the desirability
of appointing Cornwallis governor-general by a strong panegyric
on his character :
that man, of whom all men and all parties were lavish in commendation. A
man of family, of fortune, and the most unsullied reputation. On the vir-
tues of this man the late ministry built, and justly built, all their hopes of the
salvation of our dying interests in Asia. Here there was no broken fortune to
be mended, here was no avarice to be gratified. Here was no beggarly mush-
room kindred to be provided for-no crew of hungry followers gaping to be
gorged. 2
But as Dundas was now in opposition there was no chance of his bill
becoming law, and after its introduction it was allowed to drop.
On 18 November, 1783, Fox introduced his two famous bills. The
first dealt in detail with matters of administration and may not
unfairly be said to have definitely forbidden in future most of the
characteristic acts of the Hastings administration. The second and
better known bill gave the Company a new constitution. In the
preliminary debates Pitt himself had clamoured for a bill "not of
temporary palliation or timorous expedients; but vigorous and
effectual, suited to the magnitude, the importance and the alarming
exigency of the case”. The bill was in some respects vigorous and
effectual enough. It proposed entirely to sweep away both the court
of directors and the court of proprietors and to set up two bodies :
(1) seven commissioners, or directors, to administer the revenues and
territories of India and to appoint or dismiss all persons in the Com-
pany's service. They were to be named in the act and were irremovable
except on an address from either house of parliament. Vacancies
were to be filled by the crown. Fox's reason for this last provision was
that he felt already the inconvenience of Parliamentary appointments; for at
present the Governor-General of Bengal, deriving_under an Act of Parliament,
seemed to disavow any power in the Court of Proprietors, Directors, or the
King himself to remove him. 3
The board was to sit in London and parliament was to have oppor-
tunity to inspect the minutes of its proceedings. This was no doubt to
meet the criticism that the commissioners were given too independent
a power. (2) Nine assistant direr'ors (eight in the original draft) were
to be ncminated in the act from the proprietors with the largest
holdings in the Company. They were to be appointed for five years,
and vacancies were filled by the court of proprietors.
The debates on the bills took up a very large measure of parlia-
mentary time and are of great interest. The bills were bitterly opposed
by the Company and all the Indian interest. Fox, with his usual lack
of political astuteness, had failed to make any terms with the Com-
1 Malcolm, Political History of India, 1, 37.
? Parliamentary History, XXIII, 759.
8 Idem, p. 1201.
## p. 196 (#224) ############################################
196
THE COMPANY AND THE STATE, 1772-86
pany, or to take it into his confidence. He avowedly based the
necessity for the measure upon the Company's "extreme distress and
the embarrassed state of their affairs”, his bill “was the only possible
means of averting and preventing the final and complete destruction
of the Company's interests”. It was patent to all the world, as
Malcolm says, that Fox's seven commissioners were "to act like
trustees to a bankrupt house of commerce", and it was this charge of
insolvency that the Company and its friends particularly resented.
It was indeed clear that Fox, who never really understood finance,
had largely failed to grasp the pecuniary position of the Company,
which, as one of its supporters in parliament declared, "so far from
being bankrupt, had but a very trifling mortgage on a very fine
estate”. 3 In contrasting his bill with that of Dundas, Fox declared
the latter "aimed at lodging an absolute and despotic power of gov-
ernment in India. This provided a controllable government; but it
a
was a powerful government, and it was at home”. 4 He admitted that
his bill “was a child not of choice, but of necessity”. He was willing
at present to leave the question of the right to territorial possessions
undecided. The measure was to set up “a mixed system of govern.
ment, adapted . . . to the mixed complexion of our interests in India”. O
He met the charge of giving patronage to the crown, or rather to
ministers, by the pertinent question, "What great officer had been
appointed, but by the advice and influence of Ministers? And ought
they to have been otherwise? " ? But he did nothing to smooth the
passage of the bill by his fierce onslaught on the existing government
of India, which he described as “a system of despotism unmatched
in all the histories of the world". Nor could he refrain from fierce
invective against the governor-general,
a man who, by disobeying the orders of his employers, had made himself so
great as to be now able to mix in every question of State, and make every
measure of government a personal point in which he had a share. 9
Both the virulence and the honesty-however mistaken-of his detes-
tation of Hastings shine out clearly in his final speech on the bill.
The Indian people, he cried, “in spite of every exertion both of the legis-
lature and Court of Directors, groan under the scourge, the extortion, and the
massacre, of a cruel and desperate man, whom in my conscience and from my
heart I detest and execrate" 10
Burke delivered one of the greatest of all his speeches in support
of the bill. Wraxall, who was no particular friend of his, declared that
it was the finest speech delivered in the House of Commons while he
was a member of it. 11 Indeed, though the orator's language was
7
Parliamentary History, XXIII, 1188.
2 Malcolm, Political History of India, I, 40.
3 Parliamentary History, XXI, 1212. •
5 Idem, p. 1262.
6 Idem, p. 1200.
8 Idem, p. 1407.
° Idem, pp. 1274-5.
11 Wraxall, Historical Memoirs, iv, 567-8.
4 Idem, p. 1276.
7 Idem, p. 1277.
10 Idem, XXIV, 221.
## p. 197 (#225) ############################################
BURKE'S SPEECH
197
surcharged with passion and emotion, there is no doubt that he struck
some shrewd blows at the defects of the Company's administration
and testified his own sincere if unbalanced devotion to what he
conceived to be the wrongs of the Indian peoples. He spoke of him-
self with a certain proud humility as
a member of Parliament, who has supplied a mediocrity of talents by the
extreme of diligence, and who has thought himself obliged, by the research of
years, to wind himself into the inmost recesses and labyrinths of the India
detail. 1
And again :
Our Indian government is in its best state a grievance. It is necessary that
the correctives should be uncommonly vigorous; and the work of men sanguine,
warm, and even impassioned in the cause. "
As long as he remains on the abstract plane of political philosophy,
his treatment of his subject is lofty and unimpeachable :
If we are not able to contrive some method of governing India well, which
will not of necessity become the means of governing Great Britain ill, a ground
is laid for their eternal separation; but none for sacrificing the people of that
country to our constitution. . . . I am certain that every means, effectual to
preserve India from oppression, is a guard to preserve the British constitution
from its worst corruption. 3
He would have none of the doctrine that it was impossible to act
owing to the chartered rights of the Company. Monopolistic rights,
granted by a legislature, are something very different from natural
rights. The Company's rights were indeed “stamped by the faith of
the King . . . stamped by the faith of Parliament”, but if abuse was
proved, they must be recalled :
All political power which is set over men, and all privilege, claimed or
exercised in exclusion of them, being wholly artificial, and for so much a dero-
gation from the natural equality of mankind at large, ought to be some way
or other exercised ultimately for their benefit . . . such rights, or privileges
are all, in the strictest sense, a trust; and it is of the very essence of every trust
to be rendered accountable; and even totally to cease, when it substantially varies
from the purposes for which alone it could have a lawful existence. . . . 4
But his indignation too often hurried him into invective. The Com-
pany's government was “one of the most corrupt and destructive
tyrannies, that probably ever existed in the world”. 5
There is not a single prince, state, or potentate, great or small, in India,
with whom they have come into contact, whom they have not sold; . . . there
is not a single treaty they have ever made, which they have not broken;
there is not a single prince, or state, who ever put any trust in the Company,
who is not utterly ruined.
i Parliamentary History, XXIII, 1313.
? Idem, pp. 1334 9.
3 Idem, p. 1314.
4 Idem, pp. 1316-17.
5 Idem, p. 1376.
8. Idem, p. 1322.
## p. 198 (#226) ############################################
198
THE COMPANY AND THE STATE, 1772-86
The speech contains the famous passage on the Company's servants,
how
animated with all the avarice of age, and all the impetuosity of youth, they roll
in one after another; wave after wave; and there is nothing before the eyes of
the natives but an endless, hopeless, prospect of new flights of birds of prey and
passage, with appetites continually renewing for a food that is continually
wasting. Their prey is lodged in England; and the cries of India are given
to seas and winds, to be blown about in every breaking-up of the monsoon,
over a remote and unhearing ocean. 1
It is the fashion to discount such a passage as mere rhetoric and
prejudice, but it is after all its universality and its total want of relief
that makes it misleading. To prove the large residuum of truth behind
the burning words, we need only cite the evidence of Warren Hastings
himself. In the first year of his governor-generalship he wrote:
Will you believe that the boys of the service are the sovereigns of the
country, under the unmeaning title of supervisors, collectors of the revenue,
administrators of justice, and rulers, heavy rulers of the people? ?
and eight years later, after all his attempted reforms, he speaks in a
moment of unwonted candour of the sphere of his administration as :
a system charged with expensive establishments, and precluded by the multi-
tude of dependents and the curse of patronage, from reformation; a government
debilitated by the various habits of inveterate licentiqusness. A country op-
pressed by private rapacity, and deprived of its vital resources by the enorm-
ous quantities of current specie annually exported in the remittance of private
fortunes. :. . 3
Are these admissions of the administrator at all at variance with the
terrible invective of the orator?
It is, however, clear that what really ruined the bill was the
tremendous unpopularity of the Fox and North coalition. Most of
the speakers hardly made any attempt to discuss it on its merits at
all, but were never tired of reflecting obliquely on the recent amal-
gamation of the two statesmen. One member suggested that Hastings
and Francis should be associated in the government of India, “and
thus make a new coalition". 4 Fox at last was stung into a protest :
The coalition is a fruitful topic; and the power of traducing it, which
the weakest and meanest creatures in the country enjoy and exercise, is of
course equally vested in men of rank and parts, though every man of parts and
rank would not be apt to participate in the privilege. 5
Generally speaking, the language of Fox's opponents seems to modern
ears grotesque and insincere. Grenville, for instance, said that the
aim of the bill was "no less than to erect a despotic system which
might crush the free constitution of England”. 6 Pitt's attack was the
most effective, though he, too, when he described the bill as “one of
1 Parliamentary History, XXII, 1334-4 2 Gleig, op. cit. I, 234.
3 Idem, II, 329.
4 Parliamentary History, XXIII, 1308.
5 Idem, p. 1422.
6 Idem, p. 1225.
## p. 199 (#227) ############################################
FOX'S COMMISSIONERS
199
1
the boldest, most unprecedented, most desperate and alarming
attempts at the exercise of tyranny, that ever disgraced the annals of
this or any other country",1 was yielding to the unreal histrionic
atmosphere of the debate. Apart from this, he dwelt mainly on the
danger of conferring the patronage of India on the nominees of a
party, and the want of co-operation between the seven commissioners
and the cabinet. The former were
a small junto, politically connected, established in a manner independent of
the crown, by whom India was to be converted into one vast political engine,
an engine that might be brought to bear against the independence of this house. ?
Jenkinson put the same point more temperately when he objected to
the bill as "setting up within the realm a species of executive govern-
ment, independent of the check or control of the Crown”. ? There
was undoubtedly some truth in this, and seven commissioners did
not appear to be properly subordinated to the imperial government;
but it must be remembered, first, that there was no easy solution of
the problem, and if Pitt afterwards succeeded in solving it, he was
able to profit by Fox's errors and experiments.
The government found it difficult to meet the charge that they
were destroying the East India Company. Burke declared that their
aim was to cure not to kill. In sly allusion to this metaphor, Wilber-
force compared the seven directors and eight assistant directors to
seven physicians and eight apothecaries come to put the patient to
death secundum artem.
The commissioners nominated were Lord Fitzwilliam, F. Mon-
tagưe, Sir Henry Fletcher, R. Gregory, Colonel North, Viscount
Lewisham and Sir Gilbert Elliot. Professor Holland Rose declares
that all these were partisans of Fox or North. “If Fox and North”,
he says, “had chosen the seven commissioners fairly from among all
three parties, the mouth of gainsayers would have been stopped. ” 5
This seems inherently reasonable and probable, but it would not
appear from the parliamentary debates that this particular point was
made by any one of the opponents of the bill. In his final speech Fox
answered his critics and ended by declaring :
I risk my all upon the excellence of this Bill; I risk upon it whatever is
most dear to me, whatever men most value, the character of integrity, of
talents, of honour, of present reputation and future fame; these, and whatever
else is precious to me, I stake upon the constitutional safety, the enlarged policy,
the equity and the wisdom of this measure. 6
The words proved true in a sense perhaps other than he had intended.
He had indeed risked—and lost-almost the whole of his future career
upon his ill-fated measure.
The bill was passed in the Commons by 208 to 108, but was
1 Idem, p. 1279.
2 Idem, XXIV, 411.
3 Idem, XXIII, 1238.
4 Idem. 1247. 5 G. Holland Rose, Life of William Pitt, Part 1, p. 146.
6 Parliamentary History, XXII, 1433.
## p. 200 (#228) ############################################
200
THE COMPANY AND THE STATE, 1772-86
defeated in the Lords by nineteen votes through the daring inter-
vention of George III, who was determined to stick at nothing in his
efforts to free himself from the hated control of the Coalition. He
had consulted Lord Temple and commissioned him to show to the
peers a letter in which he stated that he would regard anyone who
voted for the bill as "not only not his friend, but his enemy”. The
ministry was dismissed on 18 December.
Pitt came into office and brought in his India bill, January, 1784.
It was treated contemptuously by the opposition, who still had a large
majority in the Commons. But Fox made his terrible tactical mistake
of opposing a dissolution; his only chance was to appeal to the country
as soon as possible in the hope that popular disapproval of the king's
unconstitutional action might counteract the unpopularity of the
Coalition.
Instead of this he resisted every suggestion of such a
course, and so enabled Pitt to display to the world his wonderful skill
and adroitness in holding his enemies at bay. At the right moment
Pitt dissolved parliament, came back with a triumphant majority,
reintroduced his bill with some slight modifications and passed it in
August, 1784. The act established six "Commissioners for the Affairs
of India" popularly known as the Board of Control. They were to
consist of the chancellor of the exchequer, a secretary of state and
four privy councillors appointed by the king and holding office during
pleasure. They were unpaid, for Pitt hoped that "there could be
found persons enough who held offices of large emolument, but nu
great employment, whose leisure would amply allow of their under-
taking the duty in question”. ! The secretary of state was to preside;
failing him the chancellor of the exchequer, and failing him the
senior of the four privy councillors. Urgent or secret orders of the
commissioners might be transmitted to India through a secret com-
mittee of directors, and the court of proprietors was deprived of any
right to annul or suspend any resolution of the directors approved by
the board. The government of India was placed in the hands of a
governor-general and council of three, and the subordinate presi-
dencies were made definitely subject to Bengal in all questions of
war, revenue and diplomacy. Only covenanted servants were in
future to be appointed members of council. The experiment of ap-
pointing outsiders had been too calamitous.
It is interesting to note how largely Pitt had profited both by the
experience under the Regulating Act and by the criticism directed
against Fox's India bills. In his introductory speech 'he compares
his own bill with that of his rival, as
affording as vigorous a system of control, with less possibility of influence,-
securing the possessions of the East to the public, without confiscating the pro-
perty of the Company; and beneficially changing the nature of this defective
government without entrenching on the chartered rights of men. 2
i Parliamentary History, XXIV,
1093.
2 Idem, pp. 319-20.
## p. 201 (#229) ############################################
THE BOARD OF CONTROL
201
The Board of Control obviously represented Fox's seven commis-
sioners, but there is a fundamental difference. They do not stand
apart as an independent executive body, they are linked up with the
government of the day, for the two most important members at least
change with each ministry. Further, they had no patronage, and did
not appoint or dismiss the Company's servants in India. In other
respects, though their power was veiled, it was nearly as extensive as
that of Fox's commissioners, for they had access to all the Company's
papers and their approval was required for all dispatches relating to
other than commercial business. In case of emergency they could
send their own drafts to the secret committee of the directors, to be
signed and sent out in the name of the Company. This secret com-
mittee was a curious device by which the court of directors kept a
show of independence though liable to the complete control of the
board. According to the act, it was to consist of not more than three
directors. In practice, it nearly always consisted of two, the chairman
and the deputy chairman of the court. Clearly the ultimate direction
had passed to the cabinet, and when Pitt was pressed to the point,
he frankly and openly acknowledged it, the public control of India
"could not, with safety or propriety, be placed in any other hands
than those of the genuine and legitimate executive power of the
constitution". 1 The directors were mainly satisfied, because they
were left with the patronage and the right of dismissing their servants.
They had recognised that something would have to be sacrificed,
and they might well be satisfied with what they had been allowed to
retain. For, though Fox declared that "if ever a charter was com-
pletely and totally annulled, it was the charter of the East India
Company by the present bill”,? and that "it worked upon the Com-
pany's rights by slow and gradual sap”,9 yet, besides the patronage,
the directors were left with considerable powers of revision and
initiation. As Mill says:
The power is considerable which appears to remain in the hands of the directors
whenever there is not a strong motive to interfere with business of detail,
there is always a strong motive to let it alone. There yet has never been any
great motive to the Board of Control to interfere. Of the power which the
directors retain, much is inseparable from the management of detail. 4
In any case Pitt had taken the wise precaution of neutralising, as far
as possible, opposition from the Company.
"In proposing", he said, a new system of government and regulation, he
did not disdain to consult with those, who, having the greatest stake in the
matter to be new-modelled, were likely to be the best capable of giving him
advice. He acknowledged the enormous transgressions of acting with their con-
sent, rather than by violence; He had not dared to digest a bill without
consultation. ” 5
1 Idem, p. 322.
2 Idem, p. 1124.
3 Idem, pp. 1127-8.
Mill, History of India, iv, 396. 5 Parliamentary History, XXIV, 318-19.
1
## p. 202 (#230) ############################################
202
THE COMPANY AND THE STATE, 1772-86
In January he had a conference with representatives from Leadenhall
Street. The act in the end was based on resolutions which were
drawn up and accepted by a General Court. Pitt was therefore able
to claim that the bill came forward "fortified and recommended by
the consent of the Company”. 1
The act was drafted with great skill. Burke admitted that it was
"as able and skilful a performance for its own purposes, as ever issued
from the wit of man”. ? Pitt, as Sir Courtney Ilbert has pointed out,
had done two things; he had avoided the charge of conferring
patronage on the crown, and also the appearance of radically altering
the constitution of the Company. He himself declared "that to give
the Crown the power of guiding the politics of India with as little
means of corrupt influence as possible, is the true plan for India, and
is the true spirit of this Bill”. He had linked up the East India
Company and the imperial government. “Sir”, he said in the House,
"I do wish the persons who shall rule India to maintain always a
good understanding with administration”. Fox had compared the
powers of the Board of Control to those of a new secretary of state,
and had lamented that such an office should be created. "I accept
of his comparison", said Pitt, "and I say that the power of govern-
ment over India ought to be in the nature of that of a Secretary of
State”. Fox's bill, he averred, only ensured a permanency of men,
his own act meant a permanency of system. *
The most questionable and ineffective clauses in the act were
those requiring the Company's servants to declare on oath the amount
of property they had brought back from India, and establishing a
special court, consisting of three judges, four peers and six members
of the House of Commons for trial of offences committed in India.
The greatest opposition was raised to this clause. "The tribunal”,
"
said Fox, "might fairly be called a bed of justice, for justice would
sleep upon it. ” 5 It was attacked as inquisitorial and as violating the
Englishman's right of trial by jury.
On the whole we may admit that it was a great bill. It did in
spite of all defects answer the main questions as propounded by
Erskine in the House of Commons in 1783 : "Was it fit that private
subjects should rule over the territories of the state without being
under its controlling powers? " Pitt never pretended that his solu-
tion was a perfect one.
“Any plan”, he said, "which he or any man could suggest for the govern-
ment of territories so extensive and so remote, must be inadequate; nature and
fate had ordained in unalterable degrees, that governments to be maintained
at such a distance, must be inadequate to their end. ” 7
Scott, Hastings's agent in London, believed that the passing of the
1 Parliamentary History, XXIV, 412. 2 Idem, XXV, 206. 3 Idem, XXIV, 408.
4 Idem, pp. 409-10.
5 Idem, p. 1135.
6 Idem, xxm, 1293.
7 Idem, XXIV, 321.
## p. 203 (#231) ############################################
HASTINGS ON THE INDIA ACT
208
bill heralded a change for the better in his patron's fortunes. He tells
Hastings that Dundas had now become his friend, that Lord Thurlow
is anxious to make him an English peer by the title of Lord Dayles-
ford, that Burke and Francis are entirely discredited. He only
regrets that the lack of opposition in the Lords prevented Lord
Thurlow from "giving Mr. Francis a precious trimming”. A little
later he writes that, though Pitt has pronounced Hastings to be a
very great, and indeed a wonderful man who has done very essential
service to the state, "and has a claim upon us for everything he can
ask”, yet the resolutions of the House of Commons, standing upon the
Journals, are at present a bar to the granting of an honour "until the
sting of those resolutions is done away by a vote of thanks for Mr.
Hastings's great services”. ? But Hastings himself, writing and watch-
ing with anxiety and expectancy in the East, came to a very different
conclusion. He read the bill and the speeches in the debates with
the deepest disgust.
“I have received and studied Mr. Pitt's bill”, he wrote, “and receive it as
so unequivocal a demonstration that my resignation of the service is expected
and desired, that I shall lose no time in preparing for the voyage. ” 3
He was perhaps too apt to regard all the attacks upon the Indian
system as directed against himself personally :
It has destroyed all my hopes, both here and at home. What devil has
Mr. Pitt dressed for his exemplar, and clothed with such damnable attributes
of ambition, spirit of conquest, thirst of blood, propensity to expense and trou-
bles, extravagance and improvidence disobedience of orders, rapacity,
plunder, extortion. And am I this character? Assuredly not; but most
assuredly was it the declaimer's intention to fix it upon me. 4
The logical supplement to Pitt's act was contained in three short
measures passed in 1786. The first repealed the provisions requiring
the Company's servants to disclose on oath the amount of property
they brought home from India. The special court to try in England
offences committed in India was remodelled, but it was in fact never
constituted. The second act made the approval of the crown for the
choice of the governor-general unnecessary, though the king of course
had still the power of recall. The third empowered the governor-
general in special cases to override the majority of his council—the
dissentient councillors having the privilege of recording written
protests—and enabled the governor-general to hold also in emergen-
cies the office of commander-in-chief. Lord Cornwallis had made this
measure a condition of his acceptance of the post of governor-general.
The bill was fiercely opposed by Burke, who declared that the
principle of it was
to introduce an arbitrary and despotic government in India . . . the preamble
.
1 Gleig, op. cit. III, 107, 170, 172.
3 Idem, p. 217.
2 Idem, p. 174.
4 Idem, pp. 224, 226.
## p. 204 (#232) ############################################
204
THE COMPANY AND THE STATE, 1772-86
of the clause which laid it down . . . that arbitrary power was necessary to
give vigour and dispatch, was a libel on the liberties of the people of England,
and a libel on the British constitution. 1
Pitt argued that the bill was only the logical development of the act
of 1784. He always thought that the power of the governor-general
ought to be put on a different footing :
in the former Bill, therefore, his powers had been enlarged by diminishing the
number of the Council, and in the present Bill the same principle was still
adhered to and farther followed up. 2
1 Parliamentary History, XXV, 1274.
2 Idem, 1290.
## p. 205 (#233) ############################################
CHAPTER XI
THE EARLY REFORMS OF WARREN HASTINGS
IN BENGAL
IN 1772 Warren Hastings was appointed governor of Bengal. He
had already been twenty-two years in India. Born at Churchill in
Oxfordshire on 6 December, 1732, he had been educated at West-
minster School and reached Calcutta in 1750 as a writer, the lowest
grade in the Company's service. In the troubles in Bengal, 1756-7,
he was imprisoned at Murshidabad by Siraj-ud-daula, but was soon
released. After Clive's reconquest of Calcutta he was made Resident
at Murshidabad. In the revolutions in the Muhammadan govern-
ment in 1760 and 1763 he seems to have played an entirely honourable
part. Burke is wrong and unjust when he says: "He was co-existent
with all the acts and monuments of that revolution, and had no small
share in all the abuses of that abusive period". 1 Lord North declared
more truly that at this period Hastings “though of flesh and blood,
had resisted the greatest temptations”. ?
Hastings returned to England in 1764. His hands were clean, but
it is unnecessary to speak of his conduct as a miracle of self-denial.
He did indeed bring home an amount of wealth honourably moderate
in comparison with that of some of his contemporaries, and every
credit should be given to him for it; yet at the age of thirty-two he
had acquired by legitimate means in fourteen years a competence of
£30,000—a rather striking commentary on the normal emoluments
at this time of an Indian career. Of this sum he soon lost £25,000
in an unwise and thoroughly characteristic investment, for he was
incurably imprudent in the conduct of his own money matters.
In 1766 the directors were impressed by the ability with which
he gave evidence before a committee of the Commons, and in 1769 he
was sent back to India to be second of council at Madras. There he
won further favour by the skill with which, as export warehouse-
keeper, he improved the plan for the Company's investments. At
the end of 1771 he was appointed governor of Bengal, “a station",
as he said himself, "of more éclat, but of more trouble and difficulty":
We cannot wonder that Hastings felt no undue elation at his prospects.
He would have a council of twelve or thirteen members, and all
questions would be decided by a majority of votes. The governor's
chance of controlling his colleagues depended on his own personality,
on his being the sole executive official when council was not actually
1 Burke's Works, V, 55.
2 M. E. Monckton Jones, Warren Hastings in Bengal, Pa 194.
8 Gleig, op. cit. 1, 225.
## p. 206 (#234) ############################################
206
EARLY REFORMS OF HASTINGS IN BENGAL
1
1
sitting, and on an undefined but traditional influence over the exercise
of patronage. He had in fact, as he himself declared, “no other pre-
eminence beside that of a greater responsibility". 1 Hastings, how. .
ever, almost dominated his council. The truth is that as long as a
majority of votes could decide all questions, the governor-general was
more secure against unreasonable opposition in a large, than in a
small, council, for in the former there was more chance of finding a
certain number of men of good will, and a wider sphere within which
his personal powers might exert themselves. In the smaller council
the governor-general's position was insecure till the state in 1786
reluctantly consented to grant him in the last resort the power to
override a hostile majority. We must add that Hastings's control over
foreign relations was strengthened by the fact that they were managed
by a select committee of himself and two others. It is evident that
down till October, 1774, he was allowed almost unhampered control.
What was the exact position of the British in Bengal in 1772? The
British dominions consisted of a curious conglomeration of territories,
held by a curious variety of titles. We may divide them into three
classes. The first class consisted of Burdwan, Midnapur, Chittagong,
acquired in 1760, which were held free of all revenue tax. The second
class was made up of Calcutta itself, won in 1698, and the 24-Parganas,
acquired in 1757. The Company held these territories on a zamindari
title paying an annual revenue to the nawab. But by a curious
legal fiction the 24-Parganas would after 1785 pass into the first class.
This came about as follows: The revenue paid for them by the
Company was assigned by the Moghul emperor in 1759 to Lord Clive
as a jagir. The directors stopped payment of it to him in 1763, but
in 1765, wishing to make use of his services again, they made an
agreement with him by which he or his representatives were to enjoy
the revenue of the jagir for ten years, after which time it would lapse
to the Company. When, however, he returned home in 1766, they
granted to him or to his representatives another period extending to
1785. In the third class we must place Bengal, Bihar and Orissa,
over which provinces the Company held the diwanni, or right to
collect and administer the revenue, which had been granted to them
in 1765. They paid at this time twenty-six lakhs of rupees to the
emperor for the right to administer the diwanni, and thirty-two lakhs
to the nawab of Bengal for the expenses of government, retaining
the surplus for themselves.
From 1765 to 1772 the actual administration was in the hands of
two Indian officials known as naib diwans, or deputy finance ministers
-the Company itself being the actual diwan-Muhammad Reza
Khan in Bengal and Shitab Rai in Bihar. Their activities were to
a limited extent regulated by British supervisors who were to have
"a controlling though not an immediate, active power over the
1 Monckton Jones, Warren Hastings in Bengal, p. 200.
## p. 207 (#235) ############################################
HASTINGS'S POSITION
207
collections”,1 first appointed in 1769. The holders of this office must
of course be distinguished from the three eminent ex-servants of the
Company, also called supervisors, who were sent out this same year
with almost autocratic powers to reform the whole administration
of the Company, but whose ship after leaving the Cape sank some-
where in mid-ocean. This system of Indian executive officers under
a vague British control was the famous dual system. It was now
in ill repute, for while the Company itself was in serious financial
straits, its servants were returning to England with great fortunes.
For its failure in India we have to go no further than the admissions
of some of the Company's servants who were endeavouring to
administer it.
"It must give pain to an Englishman", wrote Becher, Resident at Murshi-
dabad in 1769, "to have reason to think, that since the accession of the Com-
pany to the Diwani, the condition of the people of this country has been worse
than it was before; and yet I am afraid the fact is undoubted. . . . This fine
country, which flourished under the most despotic and arbitrary government,
is. verging towards its ruin, while the English have really so great a share in
the administration. "2
And again :
I well remember this country when Trade was free and the flourishing
state it was then in; with concern I now see its present ruinous condition. . . . 3
Furthermore, the directors strongly suspected that the naib diwans
were intercepting a great part of the revenue that ought to have
reached the Company's exchequer.
Such was the state of things which Hastings was called upon
to deal. He was definitely appointed to put an end to the dual
system. He was, in fact, selected to take the place of the three super-
visors, Scrafton, Forde and Vansittart, to whose tragic end we have
just referred. "We now arm you with our full powers”, wrote the
Company, "to make a complete reformation. ” 4 The responsibility
therefore was very great. Though he was given definite instructions
on most points, it is to a certain extent true, as Lord Thurlow says,
that he was ordered “to destroy the whole fabric of the double
government . . . he was to form a system for the government of
Bengal, under instructions so general, that I may fairly say the whole
plan was left to his judgment and discretion”. 5 So, too, Hastings
claimed for himself: "The first acts of the government of Bengal,
when I presided over it, were well known at the time to have been of
my formation, or formed on principles which I was allowed to
dictate". For good or ill, then, the internal reforms in Bengal prior
.
1. Idem, p. 89.
many very great and meritorious, services, declared
1 Mill, The History of British India, rv, 532.
2 Parliamentary History, XXI, 985.
8 Idem, p. 75
Gleię, op. cit. 2, 485.
4
13
## p. 194 (#222) ############################################
194
THE COMPANY AND THE STATE, 1772-86
that in no one act of his government hath he been actuated by a corrupt motive,
nor is he suspected of peculation; but it is resolved by this court that Warren
Hastings Esq. hath formed wrong opinions upon points of great political im-
portance, and that he hath acted upon those opinions so as to bring great
distress upon this Company. 1
But the letter of recall was never sent, for the General Court by a
large majority rescinded the resolution of the directors. The govern-
ment upon this refused to pass for transmission to India the dispatch
drawn up by the directors informing Hastings of this series of occur-
rences, though of course everyone was aware that unofficially he
would be cognisant of the whole of them. This strange imbroglio
showed three
things : first that the hold of Hastings on the allegiance
of the proprietors, whom indeed he was wont to call his constituents,
was very strong; secondly, that the Company still possessed a large
measure of practical independence; and thirdly, that the clause in
the act of 1781 making it necessary to submit outward dispatches to
the secretary of state was liable to result in a rather ludicrous
deadlock.
Things could obviously not be left in this inconclusive and un-
satisfactory state. The Regulating Act had clearly broken down. It
had neither given the state a definite control over the Company, nor
the directors a definite control over their servants, nor the governor-
general a definite control over his council, nor the Calcutta Presidency
a definite control over Madras and Bombay. The whole question was
reopened in 1783, for the Company in March was again obliged to
petition for financial relief, and the country as a whole was inclined
to agree with Burke that “the relief and reformation of the Company
must go together. The Company had flown in the face of Parliament”. 2
Three successive proposals were put forward, those namely of
Dundas, Fox and Pitt. Dundas introduced his bill in April, 1783.
Its main provisions were : That the crown should have power to
recall the principal servants of the Company (the power was thus no
longer to be consequent on representations from the directors); that
the control of Bengal over the other presidencies should be increased;
that the governor-general should have the power of acting on his
own responsibility in opposition to the opinions of his council, and
also be empowered, if necessary, to hold the office of commander-
in-chief; that the displaced zamindars in Bengal, i. e. those displaced
by the results of the quinquennial settlement, should be restored.
The bill was obviously aiming everywhere at centralisation. It
strengthened the power of the crown over the governor-general and
the control of the governor-general both over his own council and
the subordinate governments. It is from this aspect that Malcolm
called it a
Bill for appointing a person who, under the high title of Governor-Generai
i Gleig, op. cit. II, 493.
2 Parliamentary History, XXIII, 647.
## p. 195 (#223) ############################################
FOX'S BILLS
196
and Captain-General, should exercise in his own person (under certain checks)
complete authority and control over British India. 1
In his introductory speech Dundas already pointed to the desirability
of appointing Cornwallis governor-general by a strong panegyric
on his character :
that man, of whom all men and all parties were lavish in commendation. A
man of family, of fortune, and the most unsullied reputation. On the vir-
tues of this man the late ministry built, and justly built, all their hopes of the
salvation of our dying interests in Asia. Here there was no broken fortune to
be mended, here was no avarice to be gratified. Here was no beggarly mush-
room kindred to be provided for-no crew of hungry followers gaping to be
gorged. 2
But as Dundas was now in opposition there was no chance of his bill
becoming law, and after its introduction it was allowed to drop.
On 18 November, 1783, Fox introduced his two famous bills. The
first dealt in detail with matters of administration and may not
unfairly be said to have definitely forbidden in future most of the
characteristic acts of the Hastings administration. The second and
better known bill gave the Company a new constitution. In the
preliminary debates Pitt himself had clamoured for a bill "not of
temporary palliation or timorous expedients; but vigorous and
effectual, suited to the magnitude, the importance and the alarming
exigency of the case”. The bill was in some respects vigorous and
effectual enough. It proposed entirely to sweep away both the court
of directors and the court of proprietors and to set up two bodies :
(1) seven commissioners, or directors, to administer the revenues and
territories of India and to appoint or dismiss all persons in the Com-
pany's service. They were to be named in the act and were irremovable
except on an address from either house of parliament. Vacancies
were to be filled by the crown. Fox's reason for this last provision was
that he felt already the inconvenience of Parliamentary appointments; for at
present the Governor-General of Bengal, deriving_under an Act of Parliament,
seemed to disavow any power in the Court of Proprietors, Directors, or the
King himself to remove him. 3
The board was to sit in London and parliament was to have oppor-
tunity to inspect the minutes of its proceedings. This was no doubt to
meet the criticism that the commissioners were given too independent
a power. (2) Nine assistant direr'ors (eight in the original draft) were
to be ncminated in the act from the proprietors with the largest
holdings in the Company. They were to be appointed for five years,
and vacancies were filled by the court of proprietors.
The debates on the bills took up a very large measure of parlia-
mentary time and are of great interest. The bills were bitterly opposed
by the Company and all the Indian interest. Fox, with his usual lack
of political astuteness, had failed to make any terms with the Com-
1 Malcolm, Political History of India, 1, 37.
? Parliamentary History, XXIII, 759.
8 Idem, p. 1201.
## p. 196 (#224) ############################################
196
THE COMPANY AND THE STATE, 1772-86
pany, or to take it into his confidence. He avowedly based the
necessity for the measure upon the Company's "extreme distress and
the embarrassed state of their affairs”, his bill “was the only possible
means of averting and preventing the final and complete destruction
of the Company's interests”. It was patent to all the world, as
Malcolm says, that Fox's seven commissioners were "to act like
trustees to a bankrupt house of commerce", and it was this charge of
insolvency that the Company and its friends particularly resented.
It was indeed clear that Fox, who never really understood finance,
had largely failed to grasp the pecuniary position of the Company,
which, as one of its supporters in parliament declared, "so far from
being bankrupt, had but a very trifling mortgage on a very fine
estate”. 3 In contrasting his bill with that of Dundas, Fox declared
the latter "aimed at lodging an absolute and despotic power of gov-
ernment in India. This provided a controllable government; but it
a
was a powerful government, and it was at home”. 4 He admitted that
his bill “was a child not of choice, but of necessity”. He was willing
at present to leave the question of the right to territorial possessions
undecided. The measure was to set up “a mixed system of govern.
ment, adapted . . . to the mixed complexion of our interests in India”. O
He met the charge of giving patronage to the crown, or rather to
ministers, by the pertinent question, "What great officer had been
appointed, but by the advice and influence of Ministers? And ought
they to have been otherwise? " ? But he did nothing to smooth the
passage of the bill by his fierce onslaught on the existing government
of India, which he described as “a system of despotism unmatched
in all the histories of the world". Nor could he refrain from fierce
invective against the governor-general,
a man who, by disobeying the orders of his employers, had made himself so
great as to be now able to mix in every question of State, and make every
measure of government a personal point in which he had a share. 9
Both the virulence and the honesty-however mistaken-of his detes-
tation of Hastings shine out clearly in his final speech on the bill.
The Indian people, he cried, “in spite of every exertion both of the legis-
lature and Court of Directors, groan under the scourge, the extortion, and the
massacre, of a cruel and desperate man, whom in my conscience and from my
heart I detest and execrate" 10
Burke delivered one of the greatest of all his speeches in support
of the bill. Wraxall, who was no particular friend of his, declared that
it was the finest speech delivered in the House of Commons while he
was a member of it. 11 Indeed, though the orator's language was
7
Parliamentary History, XXIII, 1188.
2 Malcolm, Political History of India, I, 40.
3 Parliamentary History, XXI, 1212. •
5 Idem, p. 1262.
6 Idem, p. 1200.
8 Idem, p. 1407.
° Idem, pp. 1274-5.
11 Wraxall, Historical Memoirs, iv, 567-8.
4 Idem, p. 1276.
7 Idem, p. 1277.
10 Idem, XXIV, 221.
## p. 197 (#225) ############################################
BURKE'S SPEECH
197
surcharged with passion and emotion, there is no doubt that he struck
some shrewd blows at the defects of the Company's administration
and testified his own sincere if unbalanced devotion to what he
conceived to be the wrongs of the Indian peoples. He spoke of him-
self with a certain proud humility as
a member of Parliament, who has supplied a mediocrity of talents by the
extreme of diligence, and who has thought himself obliged, by the research of
years, to wind himself into the inmost recesses and labyrinths of the India
detail. 1
And again :
Our Indian government is in its best state a grievance. It is necessary that
the correctives should be uncommonly vigorous; and the work of men sanguine,
warm, and even impassioned in the cause. "
As long as he remains on the abstract plane of political philosophy,
his treatment of his subject is lofty and unimpeachable :
If we are not able to contrive some method of governing India well, which
will not of necessity become the means of governing Great Britain ill, a ground
is laid for their eternal separation; but none for sacrificing the people of that
country to our constitution. . . . I am certain that every means, effectual to
preserve India from oppression, is a guard to preserve the British constitution
from its worst corruption. 3
He would have none of the doctrine that it was impossible to act
owing to the chartered rights of the Company. Monopolistic rights,
granted by a legislature, are something very different from natural
rights. The Company's rights were indeed “stamped by the faith of
the King . . . stamped by the faith of Parliament”, but if abuse was
proved, they must be recalled :
All political power which is set over men, and all privilege, claimed or
exercised in exclusion of them, being wholly artificial, and for so much a dero-
gation from the natural equality of mankind at large, ought to be some way
or other exercised ultimately for their benefit . . . such rights, or privileges
are all, in the strictest sense, a trust; and it is of the very essence of every trust
to be rendered accountable; and even totally to cease, when it substantially varies
from the purposes for which alone it could have a lawful existence. . . . 4
But his indignation too often hurried him into invective. The Com-
pany's government was “one of the most corrupt and destructive
tyrannies, that probably ever existed in the world”. 5
There is not a single prince, state, or potentate, great or small, in India,
with whom they have come into contact, whom they have not sold; . . . there
is not a single treaty they have ever made, which they have not broken;
there is not a single prince, or state, who ever put any trust in the Company,
who is not utterly ruined.
i Parliamentary History, XXIII, 1313.
? Idem, pp. 1334 9.
3 Idem, p. 1314.
4 Idem, pp. 1316-17.
5 Idem, p. 1376.
8. Idem, p. 1322.
## p. 198 (#226) ############################################
198
THE COMPANY AND THE STATE, 1772-86
The speech contains the famous passage on the Company's servants,
how
animated with all the avarice of age, and all the impetuosity of youth, they roll
in one after another; wave after wave; and there is nothing before the eyes of
the natives but an endless, hopeless, prospect of new flights of birds of prey and
passage, with appetites continually renewing for a food that is continually
wasting. Their prey is lodged in England; and the cries of India are given
to seas and winds, to be blown about in every breaking-up of the monsoon,
over a remote and unhearing ocean. 1
It is the fashion to discount such a passage as mere rhetoric and
prejudice, but it is after all its universality and its total want of relief
that makes it misleading. To prove the large residuum of truth behind
the burning words, we need only cite the evidence of Warren Hastings
himself. In the first year of his governor-generalship he wrote:
Will you believe that the boys of the service are the sovereigns of the
country, under the unmeaning title of supervisors, collectors of the revenue,
administrators of justice, and rulers, heavy rulers of the people? ?
and eight years later, after all his attempted reforms, he speaks in a
moment of unwonted candour of the sphere of his administration as :
a system charged with expensive establishments, and precluded by the multi-
tude of dependents and the curse of patronage, from reformation; a government
debilitated by the various habits of inveterate licentiqusness. A country op-
pressed by private rapacity, and deprived of its vital resources by the enorm-
ous quantities of current specie annually exported in the remittance of private
fortunes. :. . 3
Are these admissions of the administrator at all at variance with the
terrible invective of the orator?
It is, however, clear that what really ruined the bill was the
tremendous unpopularity of the Fox and North coalition. Most of
the speakers hardly made any attempt to discuss it on its merits at
all, but were never tired of reflecting obliquely on the recent amal-
gamation of the two statesmen. One member suggested that Hastings
and Francis should be associated in the government of India, “and
thus make a new coalition". 4 Fox at last was stung into a protest :
The coalition is a fruitful topic; and the power of traducing it, which
the weakest and meanest creatures in the country enjoy and exercise, is of
course equally vested in men of rank and parts, though every man of parts and
rank would not be apt to participate in the privilege. 5
Generally speaking, the language of Fox's opponents seems to modern
ears grotesque and insincere. Grenville, for instance, said that the
aim of the bill was "no less than to erect a despotic system which
might crush the free constitution of England”. 6 Pitt's attack was the
most effective, though he, too, when he described the bill as “one of
1 Parliamentary History, XXII, 1334-4 2 Gleig, op. cit. I, 234.
3 Idem, II, 329.
4 Parliamentary History, XXIII, 1308.
5 Idem, p. 1422.
6 Idem, p. 1225.
## p. 199 (#227) ############################################
FOX'S COMMISSIONERS
199
1
the boldest, most unprecedented, most desperate and alarming
attempts at the exercise of tyranny, that ever disgraced the annals of
this or any other country",1 was yielding to the unreal histrionic
atmosphere of the debate. Apart from this, he dwelt mainly on the
danger of conferring the patronage of India on the nominees of a
party, and the want of co-operation between the seven commissioners
and the cabinet. The former were
a small junto, politically connected, established in a manner independent of
the crown, by whom India was to be converted into one vast political engine,
an engine that might be brought to bear against the independence of this house. ?
Jenkinson put the same point more temperately when he objected to
the bill as "setting up within the realm a species of executive govern-
ment, independent of the check or control of the Crown”. ? There
was undoubtedly some truth in this, and seven commissioners did
not appear to be properly subordinated to the imperial government;
but it must be remembered, first, that there was no easy solution of
the problem, and if Pitt afterwards succeeded in solving it, he was
able to profit by Fox's errors and experiments.
The government found it difficult to meet the charge that they
were destroying the East India Company. Burke declared that their
aim was to cure not to kill. In sly allusion to this metaphor, Wilber-
force compared the seven directors and eight assistant directors to
seven physicians and eight apothecaries come to put the patient to
death secundum artem.
The commissioners nominated were Lord Fitzwilliam, F. Mon-
tagưe, Sir Henry Fletcher, R. Gregory, Colonel North, Viscount
Lewisham and Sir Gilbert Elliot. Professor Holland Rose declares
that all these were partisans of Fox or North. “If Fox and North”,
he says, “had chosen the seven commissioners fairly from among all
three parties, the mouth of gainsayers would have been stopped. ” 5
This seems inherently reasonable and probable, but it would not
appear from the parliamentary debates that this particular point was
made by any one of the opponents of the bill. In his final speech Fox
answered his critics and ended by declaring :
I risk my all upon the excellence of this Bill; I risk upon it whatever is
most dear to me, whatever men most value, the character of integrity, of
talents, of honour, of present reputation and future fame; these, and whatever
else is precious to me, I stake upon the constitutional safety, the enlarged policy,
the equity and the wisdom of this measure. 6
The words proved true in a sense perhaps other than he had intended.
He had indeed risked—and lost-almost the whole of his future career
upon his ill-fated measure.
The bill was passed in the Commons by 208 to 108, but was
1 Idem, p. 1279.
2 Idem, XXIV, 411.
3 Idem, XXIII, 1238.
4 Idem. 1247. 5 G. Holland Rose, Life of William Pitt, Part 1, p. 146.
6 Parliamentary History, XXII, 1433.
## p. 200 (#228) ############################################
200
THE COMPANY AND THE STATE, 1772-86
defeated in the Lords by nineteen votes through the daring inter-
vention of George III, who was determined to stick at nothing in his
efforts to free himself from the hated control of the Coalition. He
had consulted Lord Temple and commissioned him to show to the
peers a letter in which he stated that he would regard anyone who
voted for the bill as "not only not his friend, but his enemy”. The
ministry was dismissed on 18 December.
Pitt came into office and brought in his India bill, January, 1784.
It was treated contemptuously by the opposition, who still had a large
majority in the Commons. But Fox made his terrible tactical mistake
of opposing a dissolution; his only chance was to appeal to the country
as soon as possible in the hope that popular disapproval of the king's
unconstitutional action might counteract the unpopularity of the
Coalition.
Instead of this he resisted every suggestion of such a
course, and so enabled Pitt to display to the world his wonderful skill
and adroitness in holding his enemies at bay. At the right moment
Pitt dissolved parliament, came back with a triumphant majority,
reintroduced his bill with some slight modifications and passed it in
August, 1784. The act established six "Commissioners for the Affairs
of India" popularly known as the Board of Control. They were to
consist of the chancellor of the exchequer, a secretary of state and
four privy councillors appointed by the king and holding office during
pleasure. They were unpaid, for Pitt hoped that "there could be
found persons enough who held offices of large emolument, but nu
great employment, whose leisure would amply allow of their under-
taking the duty in question”. ! The secretary of state was to preside;
failing him the chancellor of the exchequer, and failing him the
senior of the four privy councillors. Urgent or secret orders of the
commissioners might be transmitted to India through a secret com-
mittee of directors, and the court of proprietors was deprived of any
right to annul or suspend any resolution of the directors approved by
the board. The government of India was placed in the hands of a
governor-general and council of three, and the subordinate presi-
dencies were made definitely subject to Bengal in all questions of
war, revenue and diplomacy. Only covenanted servants were in
future to be appointed members of council. The experiment of ap-
pointing outsiders had been too calamitous.
It is interesting to note how largely Pitt had profited both by the
experience under the Regulating Act and by the criticism directed
against Fox's India bills. In his introductory speech 'he compares
his own bill with that of his rival, as
affording as vigorous a system of control, with less possibility of influence,-
securing the possessions of the East to the public, without confiscating the pro-
perty of the Company; and beneficially changing the nature of this defective
government without entrenching on the chartered rights of men. 2
i Parliamentary History, XXIV,
1093.
2 Idem, pp. 319-20.
## p. 201 (#229) ############################################
THE BOARD OF CONTROL
201
The Board of Control obviously represented Fox's seven commis-
sioners, but there is a fundamental difference. They do not stand
apart as an independent executive body, they are linked up with the
government of the day, for the two most important members at least
change with each ministry. Further, they had no patronage, and did
not appoint or dismiss the Company's servants in India. In other
respects, though their power was veiled, it was nearly as extensive as
that of Fox's commissioners, for they had access to all the Company's
papers and their approval was required for all dispatches relating to
other than commercial business. In case of emergency they could
send their own drafts to the secret committee of the directors, to be
signed and sent out in the name of the Company. This secret com-
mittee was a curious device by which the court of directors kept a
show of independence though liable to the complete control of the
board. According to the act, it was to consist of not more than three
directors. In practice, it nearly always consisted of two, the chairman
and the deputy chairman of the court. Clearly the ultimate direction
had passed to the cabinet, and when Pitt was pressed to the point,
he frankly and openly acknowledged it, the public control of India
"could not, with safety or propriety, be placed in any other hands
than those of the genuine and legitimate executive power of the
constitution". 1 The directors were mainly satisfied, because they
were left with the patronage and the right of dismissing their servants.
They had recognised that something would have to be sacrificed,
and they might well be satisfied with what they had been allowed to
retain. For, though Fox declared that "if ever a charter was com-
pletely and totally annulled, it was the charter of the East India
Company by the present bill”,? and that "it worked upon the Com-
pany's rights by slow and gradual sap”,9 yet, besides the patronage,
the directors were left with considerable powers of revision and
initiation. As Mill says:
The power is considerable which appears to remain in the hands of the directors
whenever there is not a strong motive to interfere with business of detail,
there is always a strong motive to let it alone. There yet has never been any
great motive to the Board of Control to interfere. Of the power which the
directors retain, much is inseparable from the management of detail. 4
In any case Pitt had taken the wise precaution of neutralising, as far
as possible, opposition from the Company.
"In proposing", he said, a new system of government and regulation, he
did not disdain to consult with those, who, having the greatest stake in the
matter to be new-modelled, were likely to be the best capable of giving him
advice. He acknowledged the enormous transgressions of acting with their con-
sent, rather than by violence; He had not dared to digest a bill without
consultation. ” 5
1 Idem, p. 322.
2 Idem, p. 1124.
3 Idem, pp. 1127-8.
Mill, History of India, iv, 396. 5 Parliamentary History, XXIV, 318-19.
1
## p. 202 (#230) ############################################
202
THE COMPANY AND THE STATE, 1772-86
In January he had a conference with representatives from Leadenhall
Street. The act in the end was based on resolutions which were
drawn up and accepted by a General Court. Pitt was therefore able
to claim that the bill came forward "fortified and recommended by
the consent of the Company”. 1
The act was drafted with great skill. Burke admitted that it was
"as able and skilful a performance for its own purposes, as ever issued
from the wit of man”. ? Pitt, as Sir Courtney Ilbert has pointed out,
had done two things; he had avoided the charge of conferring
patronage on the crown, and also the appearance of radically altering
the constitution of the Company. He himself declared "that to give
the Crown the power of guiding the politics of India with as little
means of corrupt influence as possible, is the true plan for India, and
is the true spirit of this Bill”. He had linked up the East India
Company and the imperial government. “Sir”, he said in the House,
"I do wish the persons who shall rule India to maintain always a
good understanding with administration”. Fox had compared the
powers of the Board of Control to those of a new secretary of state,
and had lamented that such an office should be created. "I accept
of his comparison", said Pitt, "and I say that the power of govern-
ment over India ought to be in the nature of that of a Secretary of
State”. Fox's bill, he averred, only ensured a permanency of men,
his own act meant a permanency of system. *
The most questionable and ineffective clauses in the act were
those requiring the Company's servants to declare on oath the amount
of property they had brought back from India, and establishing a
special court, consisting of three judges, four peers and six members
of the House of Commons for trial of offences committed in India.
The greatest opposition was raised to this clause. "The tribunal”,
"
said Fox, "might fairly be called a bed of justice, for justice would
sleep upon it. ” 5 It was attacked as inquisitorial and as violating the
Englishman's right of trial by jury.
On the whole we may admit that it was a great bill. It did in
spite of all defects answer the main questions as propounded by
Erskine in the House of Commons in 1783 : "Was it fit that private
subjects should rule over the territories of the state without being
under its controlling powers? " Pitt never pretended that his solu-
tion was a perfect one.
“Any plan”, he said, "which he or any man could suggest for the govern-
ment of territories so extensive and so remote, must be inadequate; nature and
fate had ordained in unalterable degrees, that governments to be maintained
at such a distance, must be inadequate to their end. ” 7
Scott, Hastings's agent in London, believed that the passing of the
1 Parliamentary History, XXIV, 412. 2 Idem, XXV, 206. 3 Idem, XXIV, 408.
4 Idem, pp. 409-10.
5 Idem, p. 1135.
6 Idem, xxm, 1293.
7 Idem, XXIV, 321.
## p. 203 (#231) ############################################
HASTINGS ON THE INDIA ACT
208
bill heralded a change for the better in his patron's fortunes. He tells
Hastings that Dundas had now become his friend, that Lord Thurlow
is anxious to make him an English peer by the title of Lord Dayles-
ford, that Burke and Francis are entirely discredited. He only
regrets that the lack of opposition in the Lords prevented Lord
Thurlow from "giving Mr. Francis a precious trimming”. A little
later he writes that, though Pitt has pronounced Hastings to be a
very great, and indeed a wonderful man who has done very essential
service to the state, "and has a claim upon us for everything he can
ask”, yet the resolutions of the House of Commons, standing upon the
Journals, are at present a bar to the granting of an honour "until the
sting of those resolutions is done away by a vote of thanks for Mr.
Hastings's great services”. ? But Hastings himself, writing and watch-
ing with anxiety and expectancy in the East, came to a very different
conclusion. He read the bill and the speeches in the debates with
the deepest disgust.
“I have received and studied Mr. Pitt's bill”, he wrote, “and receive it as
so unequivocal a demonstration that my resignation of the service is expected
and desired, that I shall lose no time in preparing for the voyage. ” 3
He was perhaps too apt to regard all the attacks upon the Indian
system as directed against himself personally :
It has destroyed all my hopes, both here and at home. What devil has
Mr. Pitt dressed for his exemplar, and clothed with such damnable attributes
of ambition, spirit of conquest, thirst of blood, propensity to expense and trou-
bles, extravagance and improvidence disobedience of orders, rapacity,
plunder, extortion. And am I this character? Assuredly not; but most
assuredly was it the declaimer's intention to fix it upon me. 4
The logical supplement to Pitt's act was contained in three short
measures passed in 1786. The first repealed the provisions requiring
the Company's servants to disclose on oath the amount of property
they brought home from India. The special court to try in England
offences committed in India was remodelled, but it was in fact never
constituted. The second act made the approval of the crown for the
choice of the governor-general unnecessary, though the king of course
had still the power of recall. The third empowered the governor-
general in special cases to override the majority of his council—the
dissentient councillors having the privilege of recording written
protests—and enabled the governor-general to hold also in emergen-
cies the office of commander-in-chief. Lord Cornwallis had made this
measure a condition of his acceptance of the post of governor-general.
The bill was fiercely opposed by Burke, who declared that the
principle of it was
to introduce an arbitrary and despotic government in India . . . the preamble
.
1 Gleig, op. cit. III, 107, 170, 172.
3 Idem, p. 217.
2 Idem, p. 174.
4 Idem, pp. 224, 226.
## p. 204 (#232) ############################################
204
THE COMPANY AND THE STATE, 1772-86
of the clause which laid it down . . . that arbitrary power was necessary to
give vigour and dispatch, was a libel on the liberties of the people of England,
and a libel on the British constitution. 1
Pitt argued that the bill was only the logical development of the act
of 1784. He always thought that the power of the governor-general
ought to be put on a different footing :
in the former Bill, therefore, his powers had been enlarged by diminishing the
number of the Council, and in the present Bill the same principle was still
adhered to and farther followed up. 2
1 Parliamentary History, XXV, 1274.
2 Idem, 1290.
## p. 205 (#233) ############################################
CHAPTER XI
THE EARLY REFORMS OF WARREN HASTINGS
IN BENGAL
IN 1772 Warren Hastings was appointed governor of Bengal. He
had already been twenty-two years in India. Born at Churchill in
Oxfordshire on 6 December, 1732, he had been educated at West-
minster School and reached Calcutta in 1750 as a writer, the lowest
grade in the Company's service. In the troubles in Bengal, 1756-7,
he was imprisoned at Murshidabad by Siraj-ud-daula, but was soon
released. After Clive's reconquest of Calcutta he was made Resident
at Murshidabad. In the revolutions in the Muhammadan govern-
ment in 1760 and 1763 he seems to have played an entirely honourable
part. Burke is wrong and unjust when he says: "He was co-existent
with all the acts and monuments of that revolution, and had no small
share in all the abuses of that abusive period". 1 Lord North declared
more truly that at this period Hastings “though of flesh and blood,
had resisted the greatest temptations”. ?
Hastings returned to England in 1764. His hands were clean, but
it is unnecessary to speak of his conduct as a miracle of self-denial.
He did indeed bring home an amount of wealth honourably moderate
in comparison with that of some of his contemporaries, and every
credit should be given to him for it; yet at the age of thirty-two he
had acquired by legitimate means in fourteen years a competence of
£30,000—a rather striking commentary on the normal emoluments
at this time of an Indian career. Of this sum he soon lost £25,000
in an unwise and thoroughly characteristic investment, for he was
incurably imprudent in the conduct of his own money matters.
In 1766 the directors were impressed by the ability with which
he gave evidence before a committee of the Commons, and in 1769 he
was sent back to India to be second of council at Madras. There he
won further favour by the skill with which, as export warehouse-
keeper, he improved the plan for the Company's investments. At
the end of 1771 he was appointed governor of Bengal, “a station",
as he said himself, "of more éclat, but of more trouble and difficulty":
We cannot wonder that Hastings felt no undue elation at his prospects.
He would have a council of twelve or thirteen members, and all
questions would be decided by a majority of votes. The governor's
chance of controlling his colleagues depended on his own personality,
on his being the sole executive official when council was not actually
1 Burke's Works, V, 55.
2 M. E. Monckton Jones, Warren Hastings in Bengal, Pa 194.
8 Gleig, op. cit. 1, 225.
## p. 206 (#234) ############################################
206
EARLY REFORMS OF HASTINGS IN BENGAL
1
1
sitting, and on an undefined but traditional influence over the exercise
of patronage. He had in fact, as he himself declared, “no other pre-
eminence beside that of a greater responsibility". 1 Hastings, how. .
ever, almost dominated his council. The truth is that as long as a
majority of votes could decide all questions, the governor-general was
more secure against unreasonable opposition in a large, than in a
small, council, for in the former there was more chance of finding a
certain number of men of good will, and a wider sphere within which
his personal powers might exert themselves. In the smaller council
the governor-general's position was insecure till the state in 1786
reluctantly consented to grant him in the last resort the power to
override a hostile majority. We must add that Hastings's control over
foreign relations was strengthened by the fact that they were managed
by a select committee of himself and two others. It is evident that
down till October, 1774, he was allowed almost unhampered control.
What was the exact position of the British in Bengal in 1772? The
British dominions consisted of a curious conglomeration of territories,
held by a curious variety of titles. We may divide them into three
classes. The first class consisted of Burdwan, Midnapur, Chittagong,
acquired in 1760, which were held free of all revenue tax. The second
class was made up of Calcutta itself, won in 1698, and the 24-Parganas,
acquired in 1757. The Company held these territories on a zamindari
title paying an annual revenue to the nawab. But by a curious
legal fiction the 24-Parganas would after 1785 pass into the first class.
This came about as follows: The revenue paid for them by the
Company was assigned by the Moghul emperor in 1759 to Lord Clive
as a jagir. The directors stopped payment of it to him in 1763, but
in 1765, wishing to make use of his services again, they made an
agreement with him by which he or his representatives were to enjoy
the revenue of the jagir for ten years, after which time it would lapse
to the Company. When, however, he returned home in 1766, they
granted to him or to his representatives another period extending to
1785. In the third class we must place Bengal, Bihar and Orissa,
over which provinces the Company held the diwanni, or right to
collect and administer the revenue, which had been granted to them
in 1765. They paid at this time twenty-six lakhs of rupees to the
emperor for the right to administer the diwanni, and thirty-two lakhs
to the nawab of Bengal for the expenses of government, retaining
the surplus for themselves.
From 1765 to 1772 the actual administration was in the hands of
two Indian officials known as naib diwans, or deputy finance ministers
-the Company itself being the actual diwan-Muhammad Reza
Khan in Bengal and Shitab Rai in Bihar. Their activities were to
a limited extent regulated by British supervisors who were to have
"a controlling though not an immediate, active power over the
1 Monckton Jones, Warren Hastings in Bengal, p. 200.
## p. 207 (#235) ############################################
HASTINGS'S POSITION
207
collections”,1 first appointed in 1769. The holders of this office must
of course be distinguished from the three eminent ex-servants of the
Company, also called supervisors, who were sent out this same year
with almost autocratic powers to reform the whole administration
of the Company, but whose ship after leaving the Cape sank some-
where in mid-ocean. This system of Indian executive officers under
a vague British control was the famous dual system. It was now
in ill repute, for while the Company itself was in serious financial
straits, its servants were returning to England with great fortunes.
For its failure in India we have to go no further than the admissions
of some of the Company's servants who were endeavouring to
administer it.
"It must give pain to an Englishman", wrote Becher, Resident at Murshi-
dabad in 1769, "to have reason to think, that since the accession of the Com-
pany to the Diwani, the condition of the people of this country has been worse
than it was before; and yet I am afraid the fact is undoubted. . . . This fine
country, which flourished under the most despotic and arbitrary government,
is. verging towards its ruin, while the English have really so great a share in
the administration. "2
And again :
I well remember this country when Trade was free and the flourishing
state it was then in; with concern I now see its present ruinous condition. . . . 3
Furthermore, the directors strongly suspected that the naib diwans
were intercepting a great part of the revenue that ought to have
reached the Company's exchequer.
Such was the state of things which Hastings was called upon
to deal. He was definitely appointed to put an end to the dual
system. He was, in fact, selected to take the place of the three super-
visors, Scrafton, Forde and Vansittart, to whose tragic end we have
just referred. "We now arm you with our full powers”, wrote the
Company, "to make a complete reformation. ” 4 The responsibility
therefore was very great. Though he was given definite instructions
on most points, it is to a certain extent true, as Lord Thurlow says,
that he was ordered “to destroy the whole fabric of the double
government . . . he was to form a system for the government of
Bengal, under instructions so general, that I may fairly say the whole
plan was left to his judgment and discretion”. 5 So, too, Hastings
claimed for himself: "The first acts of the government of Bengal,
when I presided over it, were well known at the time to have been of
my formation, or formed on principles which I was allowed to
dictate". For good or ill, then, the internal reforms in Bengal prior
.
1. Idem, p. 89.
